Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for August 27, 2023

Gee…it’s hard to believe that last year in that other Batiuk strip you two were in high school.

Still, that’s a powerful message coming from Lillian the Lizard’s table display. And if there were ever any customers in her bookstore it would certainly mean something.

MR BATUIK! How dare you…give an opinion I agree with! Maus, 1984, Beloved are the only ones I recognize, but—I AGREE! Book banning is bad! Of course, GC just banned a week of your strips about wildfires, so I…I…I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO THINK! Except…Good job with this one! Doubleplus good!

Banning To Kill a Mockingbird is traitorous.

Let’s all applaud Mr. Tom Batiuk for making the bold stand in acknowledging that these other literary works exist. Maybe sometime in the future he’ll state an opinion on their quality.

Maybe he’ll even do that before running another week of strips to have an avatar declare how golden age The Flash comics “saved him”. Let’s find out.

About 15 years ago I was browsing in a Barnes & Noble, came across the table featuring books from the local schools’ summer reading lists. There among the Dickens, Orwell, Faulkner, Steinbeck, etc. was “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” When that book came out (preceded by the BBC radio dramas) it was considered somewhat subversive and countercultural. Now, here it was some 30 years later being assigned as literature for high school students. It made me feel old.

a lot of those, like ‘1984’, for example, were required reading in my high school English classes

What a great comic!!!

Great cartooning. A+

The real “witch hunt” of our times.

Buy as many of these “banned” books as you can get your hands on. Last year, I was able to get Maus for my great-granddaughter, but after reading it, it’s a little intense for a 9-year old.

I believe in “age appropriate” literature…in other words, don’t ban the books, but make sure there are age limits. I’ve read 1984 in high school. Good stuff. But, like alcohol and tobacco, there are certain books that should not be allowed in the hands of children. Yes, they should be in our libraries, no they shouldn’t be banned or burned.

When did ‘1984’ get banned and why?

No, don’t you guys see? This doesn’t have anything to do with “current events”. Lillian had a premonition of the totally logical and unexplained Great Burning that is coming to Westview in the near future, as referenced at the end of Funky Winkerbean.

Ban fascism, not books.

Must be a Republican school. Pretty much every classic book is banned because the Southern Baptist Convention refuses to admit the truth.

NO books should be banned in the United States of America. NONE.

“Kerosene is nothing but perfume to me.”

- Guy Montag.

Two of the titles, and the pile that looked like newsprint, I could not read. I made out: Catcher in the Rye, The Alchemist, To Kill a Mockingbird, Maus, 1984 by Orwell, Fahrenheit 451 and Beloved.

Quite a learning experience.

and thus starts the burnings

If they want to burn “Catcher in the Rye,” I’d be happy to lend them a match.

The only book that should be banned is “Lisa’s Story”.

When I was in high school a long time ago (the 70s), I never heard about books being banned in school, aside from the occasional ruling that a book like Catcher In The Rye couldn’t be required reading. We could still read the book for class by our own choice, however, and I know that it and other controversial books weren’t removed from the libraries. (That’s where I first got Catcher.) And I grew up in a moderately conservative area.

My parents were among the conservatives, but they never would have considered pushing to have books they disliked banned. One time, my dad saw a pile of books I was returning to the public library, and he happened to pick up one that was about the wild ways of a well known rock star. Dad told me that he didn’t want me reading books like that, but that was as far as he went. For what it’s worth, he was probably right that the book wasn’t worth reading, but he didn’t try to get it banned.

What’s going on these days? I think it’s that some folks have figured out that they can profit politically by stirring up these kinds of divisions among people. I definitely see that where I live now. They want to make people afraid of the knowledge their kids might learn from certain books or classroom subjects. And a lot of the time, the fearful people have never read the books they’re complaining about.

1984 is not not banned by conservatives because it describes Joe Biden and the democrats to a tee

Ban people that don’t read.

It’s a sad world we live in.

Don’t worry people. The Bible will be on that list one day. That’s when people will want to read it

To Kill.. and Fahrenheit 451 are great, but I finally read 1984 and found it quite depressing. I kept waiting for something heroic but nothing of the sort happened.

If you are afraid reading a book would change someone’s way of thinking then you are not afraid of books, you are afraid of thinking.

Thank you Bariuk and Davis for this strip! Those who scream “free speech” then want to ban books are Anti-American and defy the Constitution!

When they started banning books I bought a lot of different titles and gave them to the nieces and nephew for Birthdays. They loved it, as did their parents who had also read them (like I did) for junior and high school English classes.

It’s ludicrous to put The Alchemist together with classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, and the rest. It’s one of the worst books I’ve read.

i think this is supposed to be a dig on the Republicans banning books that they can’t comprehend

The only thing that needs to be burned in today’s strip is Lillian.

BURN THE WITCH!!!

The idea of Fahrenheit 451 being burned is hilarious.

They are ignorant. We must teach the would-be bookburners. They cannot help not having a decent upbringing. On the other hand, I say: Kick them in the knee and laugh at them.

Banning any of the books on that table is a tragedy!